Diamond Dirt: Then we were kids, now we're professionals

Monday

Aug 29, 2011 at 12:01 AMAug 29, 2011 at 3:03 AM

The Meramec Magic didn’t have a spectacular team during my inaugural season of coverage, but there was this kid playing third base that was pretty good. He was scrappy in the field and a hard-swinging batsman at the plate. This young man’s name: David Freese. The same David Freese currently playing third base for the St. Louis Cardinals.

Dominic Genetti

A very short, yet somehow distant, seven years ago I started covering my first baseball team as a budding journalist just looking to become a sports writer.

I was attending St. Louis Community College at Meramec and just knew I had to get involved quickly with The Montage, the campus newspaper if I was going to have a career in this business. I loved sports and noticed there was only one sports writer so I inquired to join and write.

Before I knew it, I was covering volleyball and basketball. And pretty much teaching myself.

I had always watched the two sports, but knew very little about them at the time. It wasn’t easy at first, but I learned quickly. I always knew that if I was going to be a sports writer, I had to be knowledgeable in other sports as well, not just baseball — which I love more than anything.

But I also knew that when baseball season came up, there was going to be no one asking questions and reporting like me. I’ve lived, ate and breathed baseball my entire life so if a player wasn’t having the best day or if his mechanics were off, I wasn’t going to miss the opportunity to question the coach and report it to the readers.

Two different kids

The Meramec Magic didn’t have a spectacular team during my inaugural season of coverage, but there was this kid playing third base that was pretty good. He was scrappy in the field and a hard-swinging batsman at the plate.

This young man’s name: David Freese.

The same David Freese currently playing third base for the St. Louis Cardinals.

To this day I can still see him wearing that green and white uniform from my seat behind the backstop. I remember him very distinctively diving after hard hit balls smashed down the third base line.

At the time we were just kids looking to the future.

He was trying to make it to the big leagues and I was battling my way through journalism school to get my degree.

We didn’t speak much at the time. I knew who he was and he knew who I was from being around the team and interviewing players and coaches. I’m sure we exchanged head flicks and pleasantries a time or two, but other than that, we were just two different people doing what we had to do.

He went off to South Alabama and got drafted, I went off to Northwest Missouri State and got my degree.

Within that time, Freese was traded to the Cardinals for Jim Edmonds and I was finishing up my final semesters of school.

He bounced between the majors and minors, had a couple of stints on the disabled list, but has since become a successful professional baseball player on the hot corner. I started out in West Texas working for a daily, moved to Fort Worth to work for a weekly and finally landed professional success here in Hannibal.

But fate allowed our paths to cross once more where we could actually take a few seconds to chat.

Two professionals

It was photo day Aug. 27 and my dad and I arrived early to get a good spot behind the Cardinals dugout so we could get pictures of the players entering and exiting the field.

We in fact got there so early that we hung out with a few fans outside the stadium waiting for the players to arrive.

A number of the players drive huge pickups, while other players were provided with Chevy sports cars from a local dealer. Corey Patterson and Skip Schumaker both had some pretty sweet loaners.

Then came this tall, black Range Rover.

As the driver passed my dad and I standing across the street in the shade, I could tell by looking through the windshield that it was David Freese.

Thinking as a lifetime Cardinals fan, I grabbed my camera and dashed across the street with hopes of just getting some shots of the third baseman signing autographs.

Turns out when I made my way into the small crowd of 10 or so, I was in line to walk up to Freese’s car and get a signature. I didn’t have anything on me to sign, but I thought to myself I could just politely shake his hand and tell him that I covered him in college.

Nothing more, just a friendly hello from a Cards fan to a player.

I was a few people away when an older man with a baseball and a pen came up next to me.

“You go ahead,” I told him.

He was here hours before the game to get autographs. I just showed up out of no where and I didn’t want to deny someone an opportunity and a story to tell such as this.

“I’ll let this man go ahead and go ahead and say hi,” I said to myself. “If David drives off after the last signature, that’s fine. No worries.”

The folks in front of me got their memorabilia signed and now it was my turn.

I extended my hand in the window for a polite greeting.

“David, I don’t think you remember me, but I was the reporter for the campus newspaper when you played at Meramec,” I said.

He took a long glance and stared for a couple of seconds.

“Yes you were,” Freese said. “How’ve you been?”

“Just fine,” I said as I tried to keep my knees from buckling with excitement. “I work for the Hannibal newspaper now.”

I went on to tell him how I remembered certain moments from his college playing days while he continued signing autographs.

He gave off a slight grin and finished signing another fan’s ball.

I didn’t want to talk his ear off, he had to get to work.

I patted him on the shoulder, wished him luck and was on my way.

At that moment, the excitement was too much to handle. I quickly went from a 27-year-old to a 12-year-old.

“He remembered me,” I said to my dad on my way back across the street.

The game hadn’t even started yet my day had already been made.

Kind of nice to know that a professional baseball player who meets so many people was able to recognize the guy that hung around his college team back in the day.

I don’t know if I’ll ever come across Fresse off the field again, but that’s OK. I’ve got two stories to tell now.

The story of a scrappy kid I covered in college who became a professional and a brief uniting we had outside the players entrance of Busch Stadium.

Thank God for baseball.

Dominic Genetti writes for the Hannibal Courier-Post.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.